STAR TREK

Originally published in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, November 2006.

As I'm getting out of the hotel courtesy car, a black BMW 750 with tinted windows and an impressive selection of refrigerated waters in the back, the driver gives me some advice. "Meetings in Hollywood are always good," he says. "Everybody always says 'yes' in the room, but afterwards, nothing."

I get out of the car and look up at a building on the crest of Sunset Boulevard where I am due at a production office meeting in five minutes. The driver's window buzzes down. "You can't trust anybody you meet," he offers as a dark last-minute warning before driving away.

I'm having the meeting because a screenplay I wrote went to a handful of Hollywood directors, producers and studio executives. Nobody wanted to make the movie but my agent advised me to come to Los Angeles and introduce myself anyway. I didn't argue.

Over the weekend I stay at the lovely, sprawling Fairmont Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica. While beautiful, the view from my balcony of the rolling blue sea, the palms lining the Pacific Coast Highway, and the dusty sunset can sustain my interest for only so long, and I spend most of my time wandering around Santa Monica in a dreamy jet-lagged haze.

I want to relax and, for a while, forget about the reason I am in Los Angeles, but it isn't easy. Everywhere I go has a filmic resonance. A walk along the gaudy, crowded Santa Monica pier brings to mind The Sting (a vintage carousel on the pier was a memorable setting for a scene in the film), Forrest Gump (a commercial outlet called The Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., whose raison d'etre seems to be selling merchandise devoted to itself, occupies some prime pier real estate) and a film I've seen just 15 minutes earlier, Thank You for Smoking, in which father and son stroll along the same pier.

Even stopping for a drink at Chez Jay, a tiny convivial hole in the wall on Ocean Avenue, I can't escape sticky movie connections. After just a sip of Bass I learn that the bar is a favourite of Sean Penn, Drew Barrymore and Warren Beatty. While not film-related, the bar is also home to a Chez Jay peanut that was smuggled to the moon by Alan Shepard. This alone makes Chez Jay worth a visit.

Back at the hotel, taking a walk through the grounds, I discover that just a few weeks earlier scenes for the forthcoming movie Fracture were filmed in one of the property's luxury bungalows. I am aware that I'm in Los Angeles, the international capital of film, but this is nuts. I head back up to my balcony and watch the sun set, trying not to mentally list the hundreds of films in which I've seen it set before.

On Monday, to be closer to the action, I move to the spectacularly groovy Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills. Looming above the intersection of Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevard, the enormous Beverly Hilton opened in 1955 and, thanks to a recent $80 million renovation, combines an aesthetic hipness worthy ofSwingers with large, luxurious rooms boasting essential modern conveniences. It's also home to Trader Vic's, the original Tiki-themed cocktail bar and restaurant; just one mai tai there and you'll swear you're in the South Pacific (or South Pacific).

I can't really afford to shop in Beverly Hills but I can avail myself of a free facial at Saks Fifth Avenue. I lurk around the store's cosmetics department waiting for Corbin Bernsen (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) to finish his touch-up, then tell the consultant, "I'll have what he had." The guy looks pretty good for someone on the C-list and in his 50s. After a few minutes of smooth circular motions and gentle fingertip pats, the consultant tells me that my skin needs a lot of work and continuing attention, and that she'd be happy to put together a personal skincare regime for me. For around $650. "Lovely skin is worth it," she says breezily.

"I'm sure it is," I agree. "But I'm trying to get into the film business so I think what I need is not so much lovely skin as thick skin."

Soon after a successful meeting at a studio, I find myself powerfully drawn to a bar called Mother Lode on the corner of Robertson and Santa Monica. The bar has an outdoor area where people are drinking frozen margaritas and smoking cigarettes. The opportunity to smoke and drink at the same time is rare in Los Angeles so I wander into the bar, where high-energy disco music is playing, and order a margarita from a buff young barman who, I can't help noticing, is not wearing a shirt. He presents me with two enormous frozen drinks, explaining that it's happy hour.

It is early evening, and warm outside, which explains why there are so many tanned, under-dressed men walking their dogs on the street. I suck down half of one of the margaritas, a frozen injection of pure joy. Above me are the Hollywood Hills. "We call them the Swish Alps," a man sitting at a nearby table tells me.

By now I realise that I am in heart of gay West Hollywood - the Swish Alps crack and the almost total absence of women were the giveaways. WeHo, as the locals call it, is a vibrant, friendly place made up of lively bars, boutiques and gyms. In a city where narcissism is rampant WeHo is in a self-worshipping league of its own. It's been over a decade since I last hit the gym so I know I can't last long here and, after recklessly downing every last calorie in the second margarita, I wobble onto a bus bound for Beverly Hills and a room service club sandwich.

Four days and 10 meetings later I move to the Sunset Marquis Hotel in Hollywood. Where Beverly Hills is stately, sedate and suspicious of people getting around on foot, Hollywood's Sunset Strip is brassy, vulgar and one of the few places where pedestrianism is actively encouraged. It can also be quite noisy and busy, which makes the hotel's location, at the top of a steep dead-end street off Sunset Boulevard, very attractive. As does the pool in the courtyard, the studio apartment-sized rooms and the uber-cool Whisky Bar, a favourite of many touring British rock stars whom I do not recognise by anything other than their appalling hair, teeth and accents.

As I wait in the Asian-themed reception area, hoping to spot some privacy-seeking stars, I notice that I am surrounded by many purple orchids, a very popular flower in Los Angeles. Their prevalence strikes me as odd because I've always thought they are temperamental and difficult to maintain, like many of the people who live in the city, I guess.

A few minutes after I sit down someone else takes a seat nearby. It's John Turturro. He has an open script before him and is quietly practising lines from it, occasionally making notes in a leather book on the table. He's interacting with someone who's not there, sometimes laughing and jabbing his finger in the air, making faces and growling menacingly. Oddly, I find this behaviour far from annoying and pretentious; in fact, it's fascinating and strangely endearing.

One night I have dinner with my friend Colleen in Venice Beach, far away - both geographically and culturally - from Hollywood. A former holiday resort for downtown residents, Venice Beach is a few kilometres and several real-estate brackets south of Santa Monica, and is the only place in Los Angeles I have been to that has a familiar sense of "neighbourhood" about it. There are no mansions, no signs planted in front yards warning of armed response to intruders, no limousines. There are people walking or riding bicycles on the sidewalks of residential streets, there are wild ducks and stray cats and decayed bridges. It is a true bohemian quarter, populated by the last generation of original hippies, artists, students, professionals in creative industries from advertising to film, the semi-wealthy and the truly poor.

None of which is to say that it isn't groovy - it's very groovy, and most of the grooviness centres around Abbot Kinney Boulevard, a strip of antique stores, galleries, bookshop, bars and restaurants, including Axe. The typically good-looking but occasionally inattentive actor/model staff at Axe (pronounced, because this is southern California, "ah-shay") serve fresh organic produce in a starkly chic environment - bare walls and concrete floors - to a clientele of dedicated locals and stars visiting from other suburbs looking to up their hip quotient.

Over dinner, Colleen tells me why Venice is called Venice. In 1891, a rich business man named Abbot Kinney acquired much of the then-unattractive and highly undesirable tract of shore. Because land was marshy and drainage was essential before development could begin, Kinney conceived of an American version of Italy's Venice and converted the drainage channels into 25 kilometres of canals. A lagoon was made in the heart of the city, weeping willows were planted beside the canals, Italian gondolas and gondoliers took to the water, and by 1904 several buildings modelled on the Venetian gothic style formed the town square.

Sadly, the development was short-lived. In 1912, the state declared the often stagnant waterways a health hazard and Kinney inclined his developmental genius toward more traditional beachside fare such as piers and rollercoasters. Worse was to come in 1929, when oil was discovered here; derricks and refineries supplanted the amusements and palazzi. The lagoon and most of the canals were filled in. There are still a few left several blocks inland but far from enough to rival the other Venice.

"What happened to the gondoliers?" I ask Colleen.

By the end of the second week I have come to know both Los Angeles and Hollywood better than I could have imagined. I still want to be a screenwriter but I'm not sure I want to live here, except maybe Venice, in which case I may as well stay in Australia because it feels about as removed from "the industry".

On my last night in town, Colleen and I go out for a few drinks to a bar on Abbot Kinney where I somehow become involved in a rather heated conversation with a woman who used to be the assistant of the director David Fincher. "He is a genius," she says. "His talent and success is completely inspiring. He told me to go for my goals. He freed me to do that. Could you ever do that?"

Not right now, I think to myself, but hopefully one day.

Sleeping

The Beverly Hilton
Excellent views from every extremely well-appointed room, almost all of which have a private balcony. The courtesy limousine is a great bonus. 
 

The Sunset Marquis
A true oasis that's close to all the action you might want but offers the escape you may need. Not for nothing are the private bungalows favoured by the Hollywood A-list.
 

Drinking

Chez Jay
Addictively friendly atmosphere, great service. If you're hungry, don't eat the peanut that went to the Moon. The menu includes classic seafood, steaks and chops.
 

Touring
Even if you do not have legitimate business at a film studio, most will let you visit anyway. Tours take about two hours and cost about $45.